![Introducing…
“Films for the Obama Generation” Re-education Series
Cheryomushki (aka Cherry Town) [USSR, directed by Gerbert Rappoport, 1963]
Just like Obama, we don’t want to scare you away from all of his fantastic programs by getting into the dull, drab details. So to start our film series, which will prepare you for your future life in Obama Land, we’ll begin with something bright and cheery.
Just like us, those zany Soviets had their own little housing problems. This happy tale sings and dances about trying to finagle and backscratch your way through the local organizing committee’s red tape into a two-room flat (with a balcony and a garbage chute!)—and the convenient love matches made between flat-holders and homeless.
Everybody wants one (even if it takes having your roof cave in to get moved to the head of the line for a housing coupon). And they too have reason to Hope for a Change in housing; Cherry Towns are blossoming throughout the Soviet Republic. As one song says, every old town is having a new town built in it. In these centrally planned Soviet condo communities (named Cheryomushkis for the cherry trees planted amidst the concrete high-rises), “every inhabitant will have all his dreams come true.” Ah, sweet mystery of government-dependent life.
This screen adaptation of the musical comedy by world-famous composer Shostakovich even features a death-defying dance routine on a concrete slab dangling several stories above the condo construction site. [Pay no attention, comrades, to the poorly executed rear projection background as the lead actors nearly twirl off the slab.] You can relax and enjoy the thrill. You just know they can come to no harm, as the crane is being operated by the sexy, singing blonde comradette in a sensible headscarf, proof of her mechanical competence.
Although Shostakovich eventually won two Order of Lenin awards, he himself feared for his life in 1936 after Stalin walked out of his Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk opera (something about disliking that the tyrant in the story was poisoned to death) and was thereby declared an enemy of the people by Pravda for writing “formalist” music. Shostakovich wrote Cherry Town after Stalin’s death.
[Don’t worry, American artists. We know that Obama would never object to any type of criticism thrown his way. He has very thick skin and solidly supports freedom of expression and dissension.]](http://6.media.tumblr.com/6UBliv6kEns8jjhgdfjScUdmo1_250.jpg)
Introducing…
“Films for the Obama Generation” Re-education Series
Cheryomushki (aka Cherry Town) [USSR, directed by Gerbert Rappoport, 1963]
Just like Obama, we don’t want to scare you away from all of his fantastic programs by getting into the dull, drab details. So to start our film series, which will prepare you for your future life in Obama Land, we’ll begin with something bright and cheery.
Just like us, those zany Soviets had their own little housing problems. This happy tale sings and dances about trying to finagle and backscratch your way through the local organizing committee’s red tape into a two-room flat (with a balcony and a garbage chute!)—and the convenient love matches made between flat-holders and homeless.
Everybody wants one (even if it takes having your roof cave in to get moved to the head of the line for a housing coupon). And they too have reason to Hope for a Change in housing; Cherry Towns are blossoming throughout the Soviet Republic. As one song says, every old town is having a new town built in it. In these centrally planned Soviet condo communities (named Cheryomushkis for the cherry trees planted amidst the concrete high-rises), “every inhabitant will have all his dreams come true.” Ah, sweet mystery of government-dependent life.
This screen adaptation of the musical comedy by world-famous composer Shostakovich even features a death-defying dance routine on a concrete slab dangling several stories above the condo construction site. [Pay no attention, comrades, to the poorly executed rear projection background as the lead actors nearly twirl off the slab.] You can relax and enjoy the thrill. You just know they can come to no harm, as the crane is being operated by the sexy, singing blonde comradette in a sensible headscarf, proof of her mechanical competence.
Although Shostakovich eventually won two Order of Lenin awards, he himself feared for his life in 1936 after Stalin walked out of his Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk opera (something about disliking that the tyrant in the story was poisoned to death) and was thereby declared an enemy of the people by Pravda for writing “formalist” music. Shostakovich wrote Cherry Town after Stalin’s death.
[Don’t worry, American artists. We know that Obama would never object to any type of criticism thrown his way. He has very thick skin and solidly supports freedom of expression and dissension.]
6 months ago